Work on the Central Illinois Regional Broadband Network is nearing completion in Pontiac and the program will be up and running in a few months.

Scott Genung, director of CIRBN operations, explained what stage the program to bring high-speed Internet service to public entities is currently at in the Pontiac area.

“There are a number of different components. There’s the fiber optics that have been buried along the roadways and you see those markers across town. That’s essentially complete,” he said, other than checking to make sure all work meets specifications.

The other effort is extending fiber optics from outside into each of the public facilities that will be connected to the network, he said.

He added that there are two sites in Pontiac that are referred to as “co-locations,” meaning there is CIRBN network hardware placed in two different locations with two different sites connecting to those two locations.

“(Currently) we’re actually in the field working on the 15 customer sites that are in the scope of Pontiac. We expect to wrap it up early next week. That part will be complete. Beyond that is working with the state of Illinois, interfacing to the fiber optics that they’ve laid along the interstate,” he explained.

He said that part should be finished within the week, adding that the final component depends on the contractors working on the main parts in Bloomington/Normal.

The idea for the CIRBN began more than a decade ago, according to Genung and Richard Runner, special assistant for CIRBN implementation. They explained that there was a relationship between Illinois State University and the state for hosting facilities on behalf of the Illinois Century Network.

“The state network was designed to support connectivity for public sector institutions, like K-12s, municipals, hospitals, museums, libraries and those types of places. What that meant was because we housed those facilities, a lot of those organizations came to the university to gain access to it, because they’d have to go through a local service provider,” Genung said.

With the first phase nearing completion, the second phase will begin as soon as all of the 109 organizations that took part in the grant process are taken care of.

“We have right now somewhere just north of 60 organizations that have approached us saying that they have an interest in connecting to CIRBN once we become operational and our intent is, as we approach the end of the grant, that we’ll be reaching out to them and having conversations. There certainly is intent to expand beyond the initial footprint, but our primary focus right now is making sure we get everything done within the timelines of the grant. That’s the most important focus right now,” Genung said.

Page 2 of 3 - One thing they want people to understand is that this is not for private use.

“Our intent is not to go into people’s individual homes,” said Runner.

“One point of clarification is that this network is not about residential broadband. It’s about organizational broadband. One of the things that we’ve done is we’ve been partnering with a lot of the local service providers and they have expressed an interest in leveraging the resources that CIRBN could bring to these communities to offer a higher-speed service to the residences of the communities. There’s been a number of different conversations about that and we’re very excited to be able to play a role in helping those service providers bring those services to those respective towns. The purpose behind the grants, from the government’s perspective, is to deliver high-speed service,” Genung explained. “We’re not marketing it as a lower cost solution. That’s not our goal. Our goal is to deliver substantially more service.”

Genung also explained that by doing this work through grants, the limited liability company that will be taking over the program at its completion will be clear of any debt.

“The advantage of the grant is all the capital cost to build the infrastructure, it will be paid for between the federal government, the state matching dollars and the cash and any kind of contribution from the various participants. What that means is that the LLC operating the network as it goes forward will have no debt, which allows it to not have to incur higher costs as it goes forth,” Genung said. “As we look at the future, with technology changing as quickly as it does, we also know we also have to continue to look to invest and that infrastructure to stay in it. It’s a part of the financial model. We have to make sure it generates enough revenue to recapitalize that technology so that it can continue to offer services in the future.”

Set costs for the service have not been set.

“Because the rate structure for the organization isn’t simply a question of cost per unit, because we’re also trying to apply credit that represent that cash in kind contributions of organizations that participated, we’re presenting all those organizations with that first,” Genung said. “Once we’ve finished that effort, then we’ll go and send out our service proposals to all the other organizations that are the grant participants. We want to get that information in front of them first before we talk about any public description of our costs. That will come later, but our primary focus is to get that in front of the organizations that participated in this grant.”

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